[pablom2c]

Hi guys,

Today I had a scare with my 135i in a right hand "medium sharp" corner going probably around a bit less than 60 miles / 100 km per hour. Suddenly I lost rear traction mid corner without any warning from the car, it was very snappy without any progression at all, it took me totally by surprise. I drive everyday with traction OFF (long press) since with traction ON I feel the car intervenes unnecessarily in corners and confuses me even more. I was probably 100%-90% on the throttle through the corner, that was probably my mistake but I think there is more to it.

Luckily I could recover the car and there were no other cars around me in a three lane road. But I had to make 3 corrections (left, right, left) since the car wanted to go in opposite directions back and forth. The road was dry and I drive through that corner every day and this never happened.

A few weeks ago I installed MHD stage 2+ (upgraded from running stage 1 for 6 months), Dinan fixed front camber plates, rear M3 subframe bushings along with Eibach lowerings springs (please see my signature with all mods for reference). I know the extra torque and power from the MHD tune will obviously make me power oversteer much easier than before, plus the camber plates have reduced understeer and improved front grip a lot, but now it feels the back has no grip. I was probably over confident thinking the car would still react like it did before the modifications since previously it was really hard to lose traction even when trying to provoke the car. But now that the car is turning in much faster, it feels like there is a certain point in the steering angle that when I go beyond it the car will oversteer immediately without giving it much gas. It feels like the rear wants to overcome or pass the front. I have noticed this before in sharper low speed corners, or going in a roundabout that the car wants to lose traction and rotate the rear much more easily without accelerating too much but this had never happened to me in a medium high speed corner like today.

From now on I will be more careful accelerating through a corner due to the power oversteer that the car has right now, but it bothers me that there was no progression in the slide, no warning, it was pretty violent and also I had to overcorrect 3 times to get the car straight again. Is that because the car has no LSD?

Could it be an alignment issue? Current settings are:

FRONT
CAMBER: L -2.39 R 2.22
TOE: L 0.05º R 0.03º

REAR
CAMBER: L -1.14 R -1.38
TOE: L 0.15º R 0.11º


I'm not running run-flat tires, so I was using 35 psi front and back. After this incident I have decided to lower rear pressure to 33 psi, am I correct in thinking this will give more grip in the back?

Any other tips or changes I can make? Should I adjust toe? I might try MHd's linear throttle option to aviod all the torque coming immediately mid corner.

I'm not a pro race driver but luckily I have some track experience and have driven much more powerful cars and this time luckily I could recover from the slide but this was a good wake up call for me, I was really close to spinning out of the road. Be careful out there!